Can Libertarian Free Will be Reconciled with Divine Providence?

Abstract

I try to reconcile libertarian free will for created agents with a qualified understanding of divine providence. Divine providence is not absolute, since created agents have some say in how things go in the universe. But God has a great deal of providential control because, being eternal, He sees, and can act upon, all the moments of time including (what is to us) the future. An isotemporalist (eternalist, four-dimensionalist) analysis of time, on which all times are equally real, can make sense of this. But if reality is “already” all there for God, how can He act upon it to achieve His objectives? Two analogies help to answer this question; the Time Traveler and the Master Painter.